by Roxie Noir
“All right,” I say loudly, holding up my glass. A few people stop talking and look at me, then hold up their own glasses. “Here’s to Oklahoma!”
It’s the first thing I thought of, but everyone cheers. We clink glasses and drink beers.
More shots show up. We drink to more things. The girl on my right gets replaced with another girl, or at least, I think she does. The new girl is a little more handsy, always touching me on the arm and shit.
Raylan gets Betty to put out the karaoke machine, and him and Clay go over and work on figuring it out until they’ve found the power switch, and then they argue over which Johnny Cash song they should sing first.
I head to the bathroom. When I come back, my seat’s still there, and I realize that Betty’s is wall-to-wall plaid and cowboy boots. It makes me smile, and I sit back down and drink what’s in front of me.
A while later, I see a flash go off behind Raylan’s head. I don’t think anything of it for a moment, until I realize that also behind Raylan is a blond head.
Then I sit up and lean forward, elbows on knees.
“What,” says Raylan. He’s got an arm around a girl, both of them pretty drunk.
I’m getting there, too.
“Is that Mae behind you?” I ask.
He twists his head and looks, then turns back to me, both eyebrows raised.
“I thought you had a restraining order,” he says, a wide smile plastered onto his face.
The girl on my left looks up at me. There’s no girl on my right. I guess she’s found something else to do.
“It ain’t an order, it’s a suggestion,” I say. “I’m gonna go be civil.”
I walk up behind Mae, but she’s taking a picture of two ropers, both of them grinning, thumbs tucked into belts. I’m a good head taller than her, so I just watch what she’s doing from over her as she snaps a few shots, changes something, takes a few more.
“Those ain’t really candid,” I say.
She jumps. The two cowboys laugh, and she turns to me with an exasperated look on her face.
“Don’t just sneak up on people, Jackson,” she says.
“Sorry, darlin’,” I say.
“Please don’t call me that,” she says, looking at the camera. The two other cowboys drift off to go drink something else.
“Sorry, Mae,” I say. “Let me buy you a drink to make it up to you.”
“No thanks,” she says. “I’m working, you know.”
“Just one,” I say. “It’ll loosen you up.”
“What good is that gonna do for taking pictures?” she asks, but there’s laughter in her voice.
I shrug.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe invite the muse in or some artistic shit.”
“My muse is a teetotaler,” Mae says, looking around the bar.
“Your muse is no fun,” I say. “Aren’t they supposed to get a little wild so you can make great stuff?”
She laughs.
“Is that how it works?” she asks. “The muse comes, gets buck wild, and then you make art?”
“That’s how mine works,” I say. “She’s a cowgirl, though. Drinks like a fish. Swears like a sailor. Tons of fun. But all she ever tells me to do is ride animals that try to throw me off.”
I take a long swig of beer, and try to ignore the voice telling me to put a hand on Mae’s shoulder while we talk. I don’t think it’s a muse, though.
“Maybe I ought to audition new ones,” I say. “I bet I’d make a great cowboy poet.”
Her flash goes off, and she looks down at the screen.
“Whoops, sorry,” she says.
“You afraid I was going to start writing poetry right now?”
The flash goes off again, and this time Mae grins.
“I can take a hint,” I say, humoring her. “No drinks, no poems, no fun. Come on, I’ll introduce you around to the people whose pictures you’re taking.”
Mae shakes a good twenty or thirty hands: cowboys, wanna-be cowboys, buckle bunnies, the guys who handle the animals, even the veterinarian on call for the rodeo. The girl who was sitting next to me before is sitting next to Raylan now, but I don’t really care. It’s not like I knew her name.
Soon enough, a synthesizer starts up over the speakers and then Raylan’s doing a drunk Johnny Cash impression, singing Ring of Fire and getting almost all the words wrong, even though he knows this song cold.
“Don’t quit your day job!” someone shouts during a break in the song.
“I want my money back!” someone else shouts.
Raylan grins and flips them both off, and then Clay, another cowboy, jumps onto the stage and throws one arm around Raylan.
“We got this, y’all,” he says into the microphone they’re now sharing.
They don’t got it. The singing gets worse, but the crowd loves it. Mae’s sitting on one couch where Raylan was, laughing along and snapping photos. There’s yet another girl sitting next to me, right across from Mae, and she’s got her hand on my shoulder, her body up against mine.
All I can think about is a voice that whispered Come on, Jackson, into my ear six years ago.
I get hard instantly. The girl who’s on me curls her body against mine just a little harder. Fuck. She thinks it’s for her.
If I have a couple more drinks it could be.
I keep my eyes on the karaoke — they’ve moved onto Brooks & Dunn — and try not to think about Lula-Mae.
That song ends. Another one starts, and I get pulled onto the stage. Now there’s six of us up here and we sing Friends in Low Places, and I’m shouting at the top of my voice, not even bothering to attempt the tune.
Midway through a girl comes bounding onto the stage and throws a fuzzy pink boa around my neck, and everyone laughs as I look at the thing, puzzled. Out in the bar, someone whistles loudly.
“Give us a dance, cowboy!” someone else shouts, so I pull it over my shoulders and shake back and forth for a moment.
Everyone goes nuts, and the girl who threw it comes back on stage. She grabs either end of the boa and I let her pull me off with it, right past Mae.
Mae’s snapping away, looking at the camera and not at me. Someone hands me a shot and I sniff it. Jack Daniels. I shoot it, and the girl pulling on the boa around my neck laughs drunkenly.
“Looks like I lassoed me a cowboy!” she shouts, still tugging.
“Ain’t no lasso,” someone says.
The girl rolls her eyes, but I’m already taking the boa off myself.
“You want to lasso you a cowboy,” I say. “You got to have the right equipment first. Namely, a lasso.”
I tie a lasso knot in the boa, looping it in on itself. It’s the worst rope I’ve ever had the pleasure of using, but I manage, and then I try to work the thing.
Everyone laughs. A feather boa doesn’t make for a very useful lasso. Someone grabs it from me, someone a little better at roping than me, and after a couple of tries he manages to land the lasso around an empty beer pitcher.
I sneak another glance at Mae, who’s laughing along, still watching through the camera. The world’s starting to feel a little unsteady, and then I realize I’ve been looking at her a little too long. I’m still looking, too drunk to drag my eyes away when my brain tells me to.
Finally she looks at me, her eyes so bright they almost glow in the dark, and as she holds my gaze something changes in her face, like she’s thinking of a secret that the two of us have, alone, even in the middle of this crowd of people.
Come on, Jackson.
I guess we do have a secret.
The cowboy with the boa lasso manages to rope someone else’s head. Another boa appears, and I’m wondering if there’s a box somewhere in this bar full of weird costume props. Now Mae is standing and people are on the couch, two girls and a cowboy, all posing like they’re in a photo booth.
Mae’s being very obliging. I wonder if the pictures will turn out the way they think, and then a girl pulls me down onto the couch
and I’m way, way too drunk to resist.
She grabs my hat from where it was sitting, puts it on herself, and then sits on my lap, a boa around my neck. Mae snaps the picture and the camera’s in the way of her face, so I can’t see it.
The girl kisses my cheek. Snap. She pulls my hand onto her ass and I squeeze, out of habit. Snap.
She takes off my hat and holds it in front of our faces.
“I bet these pictures are going to be so hot,” she whispers.
“Yeah,” I say, because I’m pretty sure I have to say something.
“You going home alone tonight, cowboy?” she asks me, her tequila breath hot on my ear.
It’s getting a little stuffy here, behind my hat, but I’m on autopilot. I’ve got one hand on her ass and one on her thigh.
“You tell me,” I say.
The girl kisses me on the mouth. Her lips are soft but almost flaccid, she’s at a weird angle, and she’s drunk. Her mouth is only half on mine when she pushes her tongue past my lips and giggles, the cowboy hat still covering our faces.
I try to kiss her back, but it’s all teeth and tongue and tequila, so after a second I give up and turn my head away.
I push the hat down, but Mae’s turned away, snapping photos of the other couch.
The girl over there’s taken her shirt off and is just holding a cowboy hat in front of her tits and giggling. Mae just keeps taking pictures, a look of total concentration on her face. In a minute the girl is on her knees on the couch and Raylan’s behind her, and she’s making a face at the camera that I think she thinks is sexy.
“You wanna get out of here?” the girl on my lap purrs into my ear.
“It’s still early,” I say. “Give it some time.”
She pouts, but my eyes slide past her and to Mae, who’s perfectly sober, quietly snapping away.
I bet Mae’s the only one who’s going to remember most of this tomorrow, I think.
9
Mae
This wasn’t really how it was supposed to go, but I’m rolling with it. Instead of quietly taking pictures from the background, somehow the pictures have become the main attraction.
Right now, there’s a half-naked lady on a couch holding a cowboy hat over her chest. She’s alternating between looking at the camera flirtatiously and trying to get her bra back from Raylan, who’s holding it just out of her reach.
She’s not trying that hard. Neither of them are, but it’s a good diversion from Jackson, who’s got a girl on his lap right now and keeps sloppily making out with her.
I don’t mind. There’s no version of reality in which I have a claim on him, and it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into by coming here.
That doesn’t mean I have to watch.
“Raylan!” the half-naked girl squeals, and lunges across his lap for her bra, her ass sticking into the air.
Raylan looks at the camera and grins, and I snap it.
“Okay, everybody,” says a woman’s voice behind me, and I turn. Everyone turns, and the crowd quiets a little.
It’s a middle-aged woman, streaks of gray in her brown hair, stern face.
“This ain’t a nudie establishment,” she says, picking up two empty pitchers. “Ladies, please keep your clothes on, you got that?”
She stares hard at the half-naked girl. The half-naked girl actually blushes. I’d love to get a picture of them both, a wide-angle shot, but I’m not in a good spot for it. Crap.
“Sorry, Betty,” the girl says, and everyone else mutters an apology too.
Betty grabs a few more empties and leaves. Amazingly, most of the cowboys there look slightly chastened, and I raise my eyebrows.
The half-naked girl takes her shirt and bra and slinks off to the bathroom. I take the chance to fade into the background again, lean against a wall, and just watch.
Karaoke kicks up again. The girl finally gets off of Jackson’s lap and walks off somewhere else, and he stands and joins another karaoke group. None of them can carry a tune in a bucket, but everyone is so wasted that they hardly notice, or if they notice, they don’t care.
I’m trying some shots with a slightly longer exposure, the camera kept still on a table, when one of the cowboys who isn’t singing walks over to me. I think his name is... Clay, or Wyatt, or Trevor, or something else typical.
“You takin’ pictures?” he asks, coming up behind me. His voice is slurred, and it makes his accent sound particularly thick.
“Actually, I’m a minion of Satan and I’ve been sent here with this soul-capturing device,” I say. “If I can capture a hundred souls in one day, he’ll give me a bonus. I’m saving up to buy a house in the nice part of Hell.”
I click the shutter and hold my breath, giving the exposure an extra moment. Then I look over at Clay-Wyatt-Trevor, and he just blinks at me.
“What?” he says, his face a mask of confusion.
“Yes, I’m taking pictures,” I say.
He frowns.
“You said something about Satan,” he says.
“You must be hearing things,” I say. “I’m a photographer for Sports Weekly, covering the rodeo.”
I know I shouldn’t mess with drunk people, but it’s so tempting sometimes, especially when I’m the only sober one around.
“Right,” he says, and gives his head a little shake, like he can knock his confusion out through an ear. “You like it?”
I turn away from the camera for a moment and look at him. He’s young, probably college-aged, though I don’t know if he’s ever been to a college course.
Most of these guys haven’t. Rodeo riders are young, because the younger they are, the more reckless, and the faster broken bones and punctured lungs heal.
Bull riding breaks people, and it breaks them fast. Most of the guys here are my age or younger, and it can be easy to forget.
“I like—” I start, but someone else swoops in and snatches my camera off the table, laughing wildly and running away.
“Hey!” I shout, and go after him, my heart squeezing in my chest.
He turns and looks at me. It’s Jackson’s friend Raylan, and he rushes off to a knot of young men.
“Cover me, y’all!” he says, and pushes between them.
I grind my teeth together, but I know better than to get outwardly upset. I know Raylan’s type. I grew up with Raylan’s type, and he never got much beyond pulling cute girls’ pigtails just to get a reaction.
He’s just gotten away with it for about ten years longer than he should have.
“I hope you got four thousand dollars if you break that,” I call.
I force myself to walk, not run, to where he is. He’s standing behind a couple other guys, his back turned.
The other guys look a little alarmed when I say four thousand dollars. It’s not hard to push my way past them, and then I stand there, arms crossed.
“Give it back, Raylan,” I say.
I just watched him play keep away with another girl’s bra, and I’m not about to fall into the trap of looking like I’m enjoying this or flirting with him.
“Come get it,” he says, and turns around.
I have a bad feeling that I know what he just did with my camera. Black flames of rage kindle in my chest, but I don’t do anything. I know better than to seem upset.
Instead, I hold out one hand.
“This is my job,” I say. “You break that one, I’m out on the street.”
Now the other cowboys look really nervous. Raylan considers this, the humor draining from his face.
The karaoke song ends, and suddenly everyone’s looking at our standoff.
“It’s right here,” he says, wiggling it a little.
My stomach lurches. If he drops the camera, I’m screwed. I’ll probably have to go into Oklahoma City to get another one and put that on my credit card, and God only knows when I’ll be able to pay it off — not to mention I’ll lose a day of shooting.
From the corner of my eye, I see Jackson walk over.
For a moment, I’m afraid that Raylan is going to toss the camera to him or something, and then Jackson’s going to run somewhere with it.
It’s like I’m on a playground. With children, except these children ought to know better by now.
The flames of anger grow.
“Give me the camera,” I say, keeping my voice low and soft.
Raylan looks around at the other people, but they all look uneasy, and I think he realizes he’s the only one still playing the game.
He hands it back, and I take it with both hands, holding it as tight as I can.
Then he smirks.
“Let me know if you see anything you like,” he says.
Now I’m certain I know what he did with my camera. I turn it on, and after a second, the viewfinder screen lights up.
I scroll back one picture and I’m not thrilled to see I was right: there’s a blurry, grainy photo of a flesh-toned tube sticking out of a pair of jeans.
Raylan’s grinning, and I’m so mad I’m shaking.
They would never do this if I were a man, I think. I wouldn’t have to play these stupid games. I wouldn’t get hit on by the people I’m trying to photograph.
I could just do my job.
I know better than to show them how angry I really am, because that’s just want these cocky, idiotic, amped-up man-children want. Instead I cock my head slightly and frown, like I’m trying to figure out what it’s a picture of.
“Is that your finger?” I finally say.
The other guys chuckle. Raylan’s grin broadens, like he’s trying to cover something.
“Ain’t no finger,” he says.
I squint.
“You sure?” I ask, and then extend one pinky, trying to match the angle of the penis in the picture.
The other guys laugh more, and Raylan starts to frown.
“You can just admit you like it, you know,” he says. I think he’s trying to sound cocky, but he just sounds sulky.
Now I laugh.
“It’s not even that cold in here,” I say, and now everyone’s on my side here, and we’re all laughing at Raylan, who’s flustered and trying not to act it.